Seattle Outrage Over Boeing's Move Will Pass

S E A T T L E, Wash., March 23, 2001 -- News that the Boeing Company is preparing to relocate its corporate headquarters outside the Seattle area has rattled the Pacific Northwest with the psychological intensity of the recent earthquake.

Not that residents of the area haven't become rather hardened to dramatic swings in Boeing's employee rolls; unemployment figures often rise and fall with the changing fortunes of the world's preeminent commercial airplane builder.

It was Boeing, after all, whose monstrous layoffs of the late 1960s prompted the infamous billboard on Interstate 5 heading south: "Will the last person out of Seattle please turn off the lights?"

But in this latest shocker, employment numbers are hardly the issue.

Farewell to the Head Shed

Boeing Chairman Phil Condit suggests that only half of the 1,000 or so headquarters folk will be invited to follow the "head shed" — how Boeing workers refer to headquarters — out of town. At least some of those left behind will transfer to other positions within Boeing's sprawling operations throughout the Puget Sound region.

A layoff of less than 500 people, while certainly undesirable, will send barely a ripple across the diversified economy of the Pacific Northwest.

Nor does it especially terrify the nearly 80,000-strong local work force, many of whom are just as happy to have the "big guys" working at a greater distance.

Some members of that heavily unionized work force, however, suspect that Condit's motives are somehow related to the often-difficult relations between the unions and the corporation. But that remains to be seen.

Outrage

Why, then, the seismic response from Seattle's Mayor Paul Schell, Washington Gov. Gary Locke and assorted politicians and pundits?

The answers may be more emotional than economic. To Northwesterners, Boeing is a symbol of what Seattle is all about, as important as the famous Space Needle or the NBA's Supersonics (named in honor of Boeing's SST, an abortive attempt to build a supersonic commercial airplane).

And so to many, the relocation of Boeing headquarters feels more like a dark betrayal than a shift in corporate strategy.

"Bill Boeing," said union president Mark Blondin of the timber tycoon who founded the company back in 1917, "is probably turning over in his grave about now!"

An American Company

Perhaps.

But beneath the shock and measured outrage, locals also acknowledge two very important facts: First, the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company — the subsidiary that actually makes the jets in which we spend an inordinate amount of our lives these days — is not moving anywhere. Business is good, employment is steady, and Boeing is churning out superlative airplanes around the clock and reaping great profits doing so.

Second, the days of laying regional claims on a major global corporation are all but gone, and somewhere deep inside, we who live amidst the natural magnificence of the Pacific Northwest really do understand why Condit made this decision.

Forget the fact that Boeing's headquarters building was damaged in the recent earthquake, or that senior Boeing executives have to travel farther to get to the East Coast than they would from the stated target cities of Dallas, Chicago or Denver. Such logic is more of a smoke screen than a rationale for spending $100 million to relocate corporate headquarters.

The real reason for relocating Boeing's leadership is the simple fact that the company had outgrown its Seattle roots a long time ago. Both in terms of stock ownership and scope of business, Boeing is an American company — a global corporation — not a Seattle icon. Provided no more of the company or its payroll moves away, and provided the close involvement of Boeing in the community affairs of the area remains constant, most Northwesterners will get over their "outrage" rather quickly.

After all, there is also great pride to be had in shifting from the idea that Boeing is a Seattle company to the reality that Boeing began in Seattle, grew strong in that green and rainy incubator, and now encompasses the entire planet.

John Nance is ABCNEWS' aviation analyst. He lives in the Seattle area.